Intuit, the company that makes personal and small business software, has launched a new capability called “Federated Applications” that allows SaaS developers to write their applications using any programming language and cloud platform and connect them to the Intuit Partner Platform. Intuit’s Partner Platform provides a foundation for developers to build and deploy apps that can be integrated with Intuit’s small business accounting software, QuickBooks. QuickBooks has close to 25 million users within 4 million businesses who can buy these apps on Intuit’s own version of its Salesforce.com-like App Store, Intuit Marketplace.
The “Federated Applications” functionality lets developers who have existing SaaS applications that are built with any programming language, database or cloud computing platform publish their apps on Intuit Marketplace. Applications won’t have to be rewritten to conform to QuickBooks but will instead go through a minor configuration process.
Last year, Intuit opened up the API to its management software, QuickBase, to developers who wanted to build web applications and businesses on top of the product, in an effort to enter a space already occupied by Salesforce.com, Google, and Amazon. This recent news seems like another strategic move for Intuit to open up its app marketplace in order to gain a greater variety of apps from different developers. Previously, developers were limited to developing an app for QuickBooks directly on Intuit’s Partner Platform and then could only market that app solely on Intuit Workplace. Now, app developers who have SaaS offerings on other CRMs or software products can tap into the QuickBooks community, and vice versa.
For example, Vertical Response, which creates an e-mail marketing, online survey and direct mail application, sells its app on the Salesforce.com AppExchange and will now sell its app on Intuit Workplace. The VerticalResponse app that sells on Intuit Workplace adds sales and marketing tools to the accounting functionality of QuickBooks.
Other “Federated Apps” on Intuit Workplace include Dimdim, a web conferencing tool; Rypple, a collaborative app; Setster, which assists with scheduling; and ExpenseWare, a travel and expense reporting application.
Congratulations to Intuit for launching the Intuit Partner Platform. MindTouch is honored to power their community for federated applications. Intuit is in good company with Mozilla, Rightscale, and more who have selected MindTouch as their collaborative community portal. Go Intuit!
Intuit finally realizes there is a promising profit in localizing its products that can be operated by worldwide non-English speaking users.
@Windowslogy, do you know if they support also right-to-left languages? I am using an online IDE called CodeRun.com
I think what is meant by multi-lingual here is that any PROGRAMMING language can be used.
We have been participating on the Intuit Marketplace for over a year and have found that this is a very powerful and promising cloud platform. Any customer can come in off the open Internet and conduct a free trial of your application in under a minute. This new capacity for federated applications is another step in the right direction.
In related news, Intuit purchased PayCycle yesterday.
So what’s the idea here, that you basically connect all sorts of apps that can have to do with any sort of business you might be running and ultimately fill up quickbooks with accounting data automatically? Is that the big picture?
The main idea seems to be that my existing web application can now access one of my user’s Quickbooks data.
Of course, my user needs to grant me access through Intuit’s platform, but once they do I can use the Quickbooks data to improve the existing services I provide to that customer. It’s federating a users identities between my app and Intuit’s systems.
Hi James,
Basically, yes. Small businesses have unique needs for varied applications that help them run their business — ultimately, just about everything a small business does touches core financial or contact data in some fundamental way — through IPP developers can build apps that naturally integrate with the life-blood of the business, and naturally integrate with each other, so when you add a customer in one app, you see it in all the other apps that deal with customers, etc.
Powered by MindTouch.
Yet another happy MindTouch customer.
Great to see yet another MindTouch success story!! Congrats to Intuit!!
@bjorg – yeah, mindtouch is cool for running our IPP Developer center
– easy CMS…that’s what the world needs!
We hope to hop on this platform in the very near future with our new mobile marketing service at fanminder.com
I’m not entirely unbiased – I used to work for Intuit and can attest the company is relentless at figuring out things over time. This seems like a huge step in the right direction towards a more open eco-system connecting Intuit and developers.